This soup started with an impulse shop of two big fennel bulbs, a bulb of new season garlic and a couple of banana shallots. I imagined a pale soup flecked with crisp scraps of bacon but it changed course as the fennel shrunk, adding carrots, potatoes and spinach and finally, chopped tomato, ending up with…

I love smoked haddock and love its versatility. My mum used to poach it in water, I used to poach it in milk but now use equal amounts of water and milk with a bay leaf and peppercorns. The poaching liquid usually becomes the sauce that goes with the fish but for this recipe, which…

It’s definitely shepherd’s pie weather, supreme comfort grub, perfect with frozen peas, cauli cheese or Chang’s Cabbage (recipe follows) a favourite from Caroline Conran’s recipe in Poor Cook (if you see a copy snap it up). It makes a change from boiled cabbage. ‘This is a lovely sweet-sour cabbage, very Chinese but rather good with…

This lovely gratin was the happy consequence of leftovers from a very large chicken cooked Antiboise-style (Poulet Antiboise). Torn chicken, jellied juices and soft, sweet, onion counterbalanced by wilted Treviso (or other red chicory) cried out for a crisp potato topping. This recipe, though, creates similar flavours from scratch with a mound of gently cooked…

Staring into the cupboard where I keep my tinned and bottled goods my eyes fell on a jar of tuna. It almost pushed itself towards me, ready to make fishcakes with leftover mashed potato winking at me from the fridge. I also happened to have a little packet of dill in the fridge but flat…

This is surely the ultimate Greek spinach pie, the pie that swells with egg and feta cheese enveloping the slippery soft spinach with mint and dill, in layers of crisp golden pastry. I don’t know why I don’t make it more often, it never fails and always seems such a treat. The top is etched…

Puttanesca is a chilli-hot, fresh tomato sauce flecked with capers and black olives, the flavours underpinned with surprising gravitas by crushed anchovy and garlic softened in olive oil, the salad-sauce littered with basil. It’s normally something to make in late summer when tomatoes are at their most flavoursome but winter tomatoes, slow-ripened in Sicily, Sardinia…

This is one of the simplest and most delicious ways of cooking a whole chicken. Whenever I cook it, everyone wants the recipe. It’s known as buried chicken in my house (others call it Antibes Roast Chicken), a dish I discovered years ago in Elizabeth David’s A Book of Mediterranean Food. The bird nestles upside…

It’s intriguing how a pinch of an unexpected seasoning can lift quite ordinary ingredients. That’s the case with this thick and chunky vegetable soup that sprang into life when the caraway carton fell off the herb rack and scattered its black seed everywhere. Lightly pounded it combined with fresh ginger, garlic and chilli to give…

This is one of the most useful recipes ever. It is such a simple soup and one that you can vary and jazz up with minimal trouble. And so quick. I often add a little mint sauce or a handful of fresh mint but it’s not really necessary. Other soft herbs like basil, chervil and…